Madonna Enthroned with Child, St John the Baptist, St Louis of Toulouse and Donors

The Bevilacqua-Lazise Altarpiece is an oil-on-canvas painting that Paolo Veronese completed in 1548, early in his career. According to the available sources, the Bevilacqua-Lazise family commissioned it for their funerary chapel in the church of San Fermo Maggiore in Verona, and it is now held in the Castelvecchio Museum in the same city.

In the upper part, the Virgin Mary sits enthroned with the Christ Child, attended by angels. Below, John the Baptist and a bishop saint, identified in the record as Saint Louis of Toulouse, stand alongside them. Two members of the donor family kneel in prayer in the lower corners. The arrangement belongs to the type the catalogue describes as a sacra conversazione, in which sacred figures and devotees share a single pictorial space, so that the worshipper facing the altar can see the connection between the divine and those who paid for the work.

The painting matters mainly as evidence of Veronese's beginnings. The sources note that his style still carried a strong imprint of his teacher Antonio Badile, and this shows in the way the figures and space are organised. Compared with the later works for which he is best known, the altarpiece reflects a period of learning in which the painter still worked within inherited models.

It also illustrates the role such paintings played in family chapels. They did more than decorate the altar: they expressed the devotion of those who funded them and kept the family present in the place where it was honoured.

Painter

Paolo Veronese

Date

1548

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

223 × 172 cm

Museum

Castelvecchio Museum, Verona

Movement

Mannerism

Genre

religious art

Depicts

Mary, sacra conversazione, Christ Child

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